To help you ease your way into our world, we have devised a the film difficulty ranking system to rate the difficulty of each film reviewed on our site. The easiest to watch films (the Rom-Coms and Superhero flicks that you watch anyway) will have a rating of 1. Foreign language films automatically add one point, as do black and white films, and films with strange and hard to follow plots. Welcome to Film Difficulty 3.
Film Difficulty Ranking 3: More of a challenge for those familiar with foreign films. Level 3 is like a mix between an intriguing European mime artist and your most interesting and demanding school teacher.
If you’ve mastered these films, move onto Film Difficulty Ranking 4.
We all live our stories, then we die. This is the same for Roman, the latest arrival to an Ivory Coast prison in Night of the Kings; if he ends his story, his fellow inmates will end his life. This is storytelling at it’s most elementary.
From: Cote d'Ivoire, Africa Watch: JustWatch Next: Hyenas, Arabian Nights, Life of PiContinue reading “Night of the Kings – Creating Unity through Storytelling”
In colonial Zanzibar, a young revolutionary and runaway wife from different parts of the city meet. As their romance grows, so does their revolutionary fervor in this adaptation of Shafi Adam Shafi’s novel.
It’s rare that you see Tanzanian films on the international film festival circuit, especially those that are directed by Tanzanians. The industry in the East African country is dominated by Swahiliwood’s low budget, rapidly made ‘Bongo films,’ which, like the majority of African cinema industries are largely ignored by Western film festivals. So it’s nice to see a Tanzanian representative on the international film festival circuit in Tug of War, even if it isn’t your typical Tanzanian film. Unlike ‘Bongo films,’ Tug of War‘s production quality matches the criteria for Western film festivals, with beautiful cinematography inspired by Wong Kar Wai, good production design, and great acting. It perfectly fits the Western expectations of ‘good’ international cinema.
The warmly patient pace of Tug of War defines the films tone, characters, and relationships. It’s created through the slow motion shots and orange tinted film that the director, Amil Shivji, uses throughout the film, just as Wong Kar Wai did in In the Mood for Love. The slow motion highlights some of the defining moments in the character’s relationships. This is clearest in the shot of Denge and Yasmin’s first glance of each other. Stretching out this fleeting glance captures the longing in that brief look, symbolically starting the embers that starts their romance. These slow motion moments also signify their enlightenment. One shot shows Yasmin pushing against the flow of a moving crowd. At regular speed, the shot might be forgettable, but in slow motion it becomes symbolic of her going against the grain of her family’s expectations and grabbing her own independence. Lastly the slow motion also emphasizes the link between their budding romance and new-found independence with the anti-colonial revolution that stands against both. This is captured in the slow motion scene of red pamphlets falling between them like wedding confetti (as in the image above).
For a beautifully shot, anti-colonial Tanzanian film inspired by Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love, watch Tug of War. It features sumptuously warm cinematography, a slow burning romance, and a fight for independence. This interracial, extra-marital love is anti-colonial. Viva la revolución.
Check back to our Pan African Film Festival 2022 page for more reviews coming out of the 30th edition of the festival.
Director Rungano Nyoni broke into the art-house film world in 2017 with her debut film, I Am Not A Witch. Her second feature, On Becoming Guinea Fowl, builds on her first and puts Zambia on the film map. It’s a chance for you to explore inter-generational trauma and the culture of silence with an anti-patriarchal lens rooted in Zambia.
From: Zambia, Africa
Watch: iMDB, JustWatch
Next: I Am Not a Witch, Moolaade, Monsoon Wedding
You might be wondering what a guinea fowl is and what this film has got to with them. Don’t worry I’ll help to answer these questions.
Firstly, a guinea fowl is a bird that belongs to the same order as chickens, turkeys, and pheasants. The helmeted guinea fowl is the most famous of the guinea fowl family, as it has been introduced as a domesticated bird around the world, after originating in Africa. It’s iconic because of it’s big spotted body and helmeted head, which isn’t too far from the Missy Elliot costume that Shula wears in the opening scene of this movie, when she finds her dead uncle laying by the side of the road whilst bumping the Lijadu Sisters.
Secondly, as referenced in one of the many flashbacks to a younger Shula, we learn that guinea fowls are highly valued in the African Savannah as an alarm for incoming predators. They are the first to send the alarm when lions, leopards, and other predators threaten them and their fellow preyed upon comrades. This is highlighted by director Rungano Nyoni as it becomes a metaphor for Shula – the first, and only one in her family to have called the alarm on her recently deceased uncle’s predatory behavior.
Shula is not just sending the alarm for her close family anymore, as the film shows her grow close with her community; her cousins from different social backgrounds, the women in her family, and the young and poor family her uncle left behind. Like with the communities that bond in trauma/injustice in director Rungano Nyoni’s previous feature, I Am Not A Witch, and Ousmane Sembene’s Moolaade, Shula emphasizes the strength of women. She also reveals the frailty of the men in charge to show that it is within their power to overturn Zambian society into a classless matriarchy.
As mentioned above, Moolaade and I Am Not A Witch are two great places to start for more African films which also feature communities building to overcome the patriarchy. For Indian films with a similar theme – community theme, check out Monsoon Wedding and Parched.
Or for alternative media, follow Kirabo’s quest to find her mother in Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s novel, The First Woman.
In 2013, the Dominican Republic’s Supreme Court stripped the citizenship of anyone with Haitian parents, retroactive to 1929. The ruling rendered more than 200,000 people stateless, without nationality, identity or a homeland. Stateless follows Rosa Iris, an attorney with family who have been exiled by the country’s recent laws, as she mounts a grassroots electoral campaign to advocate for social justice. But it also follows her antithesis, Gladys Felix, an outspoken supporter of the nationalist movement, fighting for for stricter immigration control.
Like Softie, Stateless is an observational documentary that captures an activist from outside of the system fighting against corruption. Through Rosa’s story we’re exposed to the emotional trauma of the country’s recent anti-immigration policies. Simply put, they’re racist, and this is obvious right from the opening scene in which Rosa is representing a client in a government office. Her client is applying for an updated citizenship card but is being denied by the officer because “he doesn’t speak clear Spanish”. This is not an isolated incident. Rosa’s activism is also justified by her personal stakes. She has the same Haitian lineage as the people she’s representing that the country is persecuting. So she runs for government to represent people like her exiled because of their race.
However, unlike Softie, which focuses solely on Boniface’s family life and his campaign for government, Stateless also documents the other side of the fight against racism by following Gladys Felix, a member of the country’s anti-immigrant nationalist movement. We follow her as she spews racist rhetoric about the nature of Haitian immigrants and gaslights the experiences of Haitians she meets at a government built camp for sugar cane workers near the border. Whilst it feels odd to have their stories running alongside each other, it makes Stateless stand out. It allows us to see how present the threat is – not just to Rosa and her cousin Teofilo, but to all Haitian immigrants and Black Dominicans. Gladys adds a face (and very present reality) to the sometimes invisible state sanctioned racism of the Dominican Republic. She gives the audience something visual to root against.
If you’re looking for a documentary that examines racism in the Dominican Republic’s past and present through two women campaigning at either end of the political spectrum, this is the film you’re looking for.
Check our Pan African Film Festival 2021 page for more reviews coming out of the 29th edition of the festival.
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